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Gone are the days when the only reliable medium to train your employees was to give them lectures in a room with nothing less than attending some college classes. But in this COVID-19 crisis, it is neither feasible nor safe to arrange such face-to-face interactions or sessions in crowded rooms. Undoubtedly the pandemic has put an incredible burden on the employees' productivity, concentration, and the time available for training and development. As a result, businesses as a whole have suffered. In order to recover from this crisis, organizations should reskill their employees as quickly as possible as it provides a great opportunity for employees to enhance their knowledge base and skills to become more productive.  

A study conducted by Fosway has found that around 94% of L&D experts have had to change their learning and development strategies in response to the global pandemic and remote work. Is there a solution to effectively train employees in this post-pandemic era? Microlearning is the solution.  

In this article, we will talk about microlearning, one of the most popular and effective learning tools for employee training and boosting employee experience suggested by most of the L&D experts.  

Before we talk more about microlearning, let’s understand why training is required to accomplish business success.  

Why Employee Training is Important for Organizations?

Employee training is essential for every business to help newly hired employees understand their work, boost skills, and support them to perform efficiently. This will eventually enhance the business ROI.  

Employee training should aim to accomplish the following goals:  

• Productivity Enhancement
  
  
• Proactive working environment
  
  
• Acknowledged risks
  
  
• Effective communication
  
  
• Personal development
  
  
• A skill-based approach to professional development
  
  

In the wake of the recent pandemic, regular working and training routines have been turned upside down. A research of Arlo found that 40% of employers have suspended or canceled interactive, instructor-led training, and 58% of employees work remotely. Therefore, the organization needs to provide a training strategy that can be accessed easily by the workforce. And that’s where microlearning comes in.  

Let's discuss the benefits of using a microlearning platform and why it is more efficient in delivering employee training programs than other eLearning trends.

Read More: eLearning trends set to dominate corporate training in 2021  

What is Microlearning?

Microlearning aims to deliver eLearning content in manageable portions that the learner can digest than long, heavy sessions. Microlearning is beneficial for nearly everyone, but it's especially useful for remote employees. It stands out as a more efficient and effective instructional approach than macro learning, where the employees or learner read each page of each textbook to understand a particular concept.  

We have outlined some of the major principles of microlearning.  

• Deliver precise modules in a single learning goal.
  
  
• Provide learning in bite-sized content.
  
  
• Accessible anywhere and anytime on any device
  
  
• Incorporate diverse digital content like texts, audio, photos, illustrations, podcasts, video, games etc
  
  
• Help to retain the content.
  
  
• Ai-powered conversational learning.
  
  

However, the bigger question is what part does microlearning play in an effective and smooth employee training experience.  

• It is neither safe nor feasible to organize training sessions in an office during these times of pandemic. The employees are scattered throughout the country, and many of them cannot commute to the office. This is where microlearning steps in as a savior by providing a fast and easy conversational learning platform. Now pieces of training are accessible at your fingertips anytime, anywhere.
  
  
• What would you choose between a 1000-page textbook or a short and brief module to learn a specific skill set? Of course, anyone would go with the easier one. Microlearning's short courses are said to increase employee engagement and interest drastically. Always remember that learning can also be fun if done the right way.
  
  
• Having a proper classroom training system is not only tiring but an expensive affair as well. The employees need to be provided with study materials, books, and additional costs for power consumption. The trainer might have to come up with some presentations as well to explain the topic. However, with microlearning, things get much easier and a lot cheaper as well. You might not need to provide different study materials to all the employees; power consumption costs are cut down. Also, a lot of time and energy of the trainer is saved.
  
  
• With microlearning, employees enjoy the liberty of time as now they are not bound to a specific timetable for training while managing a hectic work schedule. You can learn anytime, anywhere, at your convenience. 
  
  

Microlearning in different training genres

1. Sales Training
   
   Organizing a training program for their sales teams is one of the biggest hurdles for sales enablement leaders. Since employees work in diverse time zones according to their clients and are also occupied with appointments, bringing the employees together becomes a hurdle for learning and development leaders.
   
   Microlearning modules that contain sales training programs can help sales enablement, and L&D leaders overcome these difficulties by providing concise, engaging digital media content in a bite-sized format.
   
   
2. Product Training
   
   If you want to sell your product or brand, it is essential to have well-trained employees aware of the product to adequately explain and answer the customer's queries. When delivering product training to your workforce, your instructors should make sure the workforce understands everything about the product. Product training is all about investing time in learning a product. Today, most organizations search for methods to provide bite-sized learning for their employees during this pandemic. Since products change over time, your employees probably spend a great deal of time staying updated with the latest specs.
   
   Microlearning modules tailored to each target audience effectively promote product training in such a scenario. A microlearning authoring tool makes product training simple, easy, and fun and keeps the workforce updated.
   
   
3. Compliance Training
   
   Compliance training aims to educate employees on laws, rules, regulations and the company policies that influence their day-to-day activities and ethical standards. If you'll look back into the past, even five years before, employees were supposed to attend an annual compliance training module to go through the policies and rules of the company. Even now, this tradition is still prevalent in most companies.
   
   However, with the advancement in technology and the introduction of automation and microlearning into the corporate, employees now need not go through long hours of lectures; instead, everything is now available in bite-sized pieces. The topic, which used to take almost an hour during traditional meetings, can now be explained in a short 10 minutes video.
   
   
4. Software training
   
   No matter how good your employees' technical skills are, every fresher needs to go through a formal software induction to give them a drill about how the software/technology is used to complete the organization's daily tasks. Initially, employees had proper college-type lectures to educate them about the software being used in the company; a trainer tutored them and provided them with some study material in thick booklets and manuals; this process was expensive also time-consuming as well. Also, at times certain complex topics required revision which was not possible every time because of the time shortage.
   
   However, after using microlearning, employees get the liberty of learning concepts at their own pace since everything is available at one place, accessible anytime, anyplace, anywhere.
   
   
5. Soft skills training
   
   Back in the day, soft skills weren't paid much attention to, but it is even more important than your technical skills in today's corporate lifestyle. An employee with excellent communication and teamwork skills is given an edge while being hired for relevant positions. As a result, companies have now started to train their employees themselves for the same.
   
   Microlearning acts as an evident approach to this modern-day learning; now, employees learn these soft skills through fun and interactive yet very informative videos.
   
   
6. Workplace Safety Training
   
   Safety of the employees has always been a concern for companies irrespective of the covid crisis. Companies have constantly been fighting against physical, emotional or any violence or abuse on their employees. To minimize such incidents, companies came up with the idea of training employees for it; earlier, companies conducted seminars and invited experts to impart lectures. But after the advent of the Covid-19 crisis, things have changed; organizations cannot conduct group seminars. Also, the employees' health against the virus is an issue in itself, which also needs to be taught.
   
   With microlearning's infotainment videos, simulations, and interactive graphics, employees are taught about the workplace's safety in general and how they can battle the deadly Coronavirus. 
   
   

Conclusion : Incorporate Microlearning to Enhance Your Employee Training

Amid this unprecedented pandemic period, traditional philosophies of upskilling employees and training staff have been rethought and restructured. Undoubtedly, microlearning is the future of your workforce training and engagement. Microlearning makes it possible for the workforce, not just top performers, to be more efficient. It is an all–in–one solution with the necessary information in bite-sized form, making it effortless for the employees to acquire, recall, and implement skills at the workplace. By improving the learning process among employees, business productivity can be increased.  

At Rezolve.ai, we provide an efficient conversational microlearning platform - Morsel, that works right within Microsoft Teams to transform your training program quick, effortless and enjoyable. It offers:  

• Drive change efficiently
  
  
• Quick learning creation
  
  
• Effective learning and retention.
  
  
• AI-powered virtual assistants to provide human-like replies to the queries
  
  
• Training and learning easily within Microsoft Teams
  
  
• Adapt your learning as required
  
  

Want to know more about Morsel – conversational microlearning platform? Then, click here to watch our webinar.